Masculinity & Fear In The Age of Trump - For the Haas Institute

Art Direction: Sara Grossman & Rachelle Galloway-Popotas

These 3 pieces were created for The Haas Institute (for a fair and inclusive society) at UC Berkeley.

They wanted some illustrations to accompany an article with the prompts of Fear of the "Other", "Changing Demographics", and also about being "the Other" in a societal landscape where certain demographics are pushed to feel like they're excluded.

It's a great article and I was excited to provide artwork for it. You can read it here.

The Jam

This is a digital portrait of The Jam, who I'd consider to be one of my absolute favorite bands.

For the unfamiliar, The Jam were a mod influenced band that rose out of the late 1970's British Punk scene but far surpassed the constraints of 3 chord punk by their third album, All Mod Cons. Their albums and singles from that 1978 release all the way until their breakup in 1982, at the height of their popularity, were nearly flawless.

They are not very well known in the US, and my theory is that their songs were so incredibly British working class-centric, that it may not translate to a wide US appeal (plus, they were badly booked to open for Blue Oyster Cult in 1978 and their long haired fans didn't understand the short haired, suited, straight-forward thing The Jam were doing.)

The appeal to me, as an American that doesn't shop at "Tesco's and Woolworth's," is in the bleak view of mundane British life by Paul Weller, The Jam's frontman and chief song writer. He can extract depression and sorrow out of mediocre observations like people "feeding ducks in the park."

If you own a turntable, do yourself a favor and at least buy All Mod Cons and Setting Sons. Just don't buy the singles because I'm not done collecting them all yet and they should go in my collection, not yours.

The Clash

This is a portrait of The Clash painted with Acryla Gouache on wood panel.

For you unfortunate souls that only know about this band for the two known hits in the US, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" and "Rock the Casbah," for the love of god, give some of their other albums a listen. I recommend buying every record (with the exception of Cut the Crap), but talking about singles alone, here are some of my favorite tracks. You might notice that I dig a lot of the songs that lean towards the melodic side. I don't know why: